My chess library is all over the house so a picture or pictures right now are nearly impossible. I am a collector not one who buys opening books etc. to improve. I like the biographical books, especially from McFarland Publishing. Also, old HC books OOP from 1880 to the Present.
Tell us about your chess library
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May 31, 2024
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#3
A local used bookstore that had been in business for over 60 years recently closed down after selling their stock in progressive sales. By the end, all books were $1.
They had an incredible chess section, and my chess library went from 5 or 6 books in 2022 to something like 110 today. Some of my favorites (from a collection standpoint) are a 1947 edition of My System, a 1976 hardcover edition of Life and Games of Mikhail Tal, and some hardcover first editions of some Reuben Fine books.
The most useful books so far have been The Soviet Chess Primer, Silman's Endgame Course, Muller's Fundamental Chess Endings, and a few Pandolfini titles. I know that many of the titles will never be of any use to me, especially game collections in descriptive notation, or the move-by-move books that cover obscure openings I know I'll never play.
Since this part of the forum is about chess books AND equipment, why not start a thread about our chess "libraries". I couldn´t find a thread about that topic except for the usual recommendation threads, so here it is.
Tell us/show us about your chess library and what you consider your absolute essential chess books which helped you out the most or that you find most interesting/entertaining.
As for me, my small library currently consits of a total of 34 books. These are:
General:
Opening (including chessable courses):
Middlegame:
Endgame:
Tactics:
Game Collections:
"Psychology"/Approach to the game:
Pure Entertainment:
I didn´t count two additional books on tactics, because they were so bad (full of mistakes) that I would sell them immediately if somebody wanted them. They are not worth noting (which shouldn´t be much of a problem because they are in German and aren´t interesting for most guys here anyway).
I marked the books I consider most useful for my general chess understanding (at a certain time) and improvement/enjoyable in bold and green and the ones I wouldn´t buy a second time and am trying to sell or give away in bold and red. The books I didn´t mark, I either didn´t read yet or find "okay" in the sense of "good, maybe not as instructive as others in the same category, maybe too advanced". As you can see because of that, most of my studytime until now was designated for the Middlegame. But because I now feel pretty "strong" in that area, I am now spending at least 85% of the time just solving puzzles and the rest either repeating some endgame stuff (currently with Silman. after that probably Shereshevsky) or deepening my knowledge with Rios´ Chess Strutctures). So regarding the tactics books, eventhough I already knew the tactical motives in that book and didn´t have real difficulties with it, I really likes Nunns "Learn Chess Tactics" as a structured and systematic (re-)introduction into puzzlebooks.
In case it is helpful or some are interested, my OTB playing strength is ca. 1700. Started playing "seriously" during February 2021 with some off-time of ca. 6 months and am 26 years old.
Edit 1:
Yesterday I just finished "How To Beat Your Dad At Chess". While the 36 exercises were relatively easy to solve (with some not being THAT trivial...), I really appreciate the overview reagrding well known mating patterns I have gained from going through the whole book. That alone in my opinion justifies it to be considered very instructional. Of course, one could probably regard most decent puzzlebooks as very beneficial, but everything gets a lot easier, when you have been introduced to those patterns first of all and now only have to solve lots of puzzles.
Understanding Chess from John Nunn currently is also very highly instructional. I consider it more advanced than Chernev´s book, but for my current level very fitting. I was put off from buying it earlier, because so many people criticized it for being just a bunch of analysis without real explanations, but I completely disagree. Just like Nunn mentioned in his introduction, the variations are only presented more heavily, when the position really seems to demand it. I like this book a lot!